Women's lived experience of incarceration in Kobo Prison Center, Ethiopia: implications for social work practice

Ethiopian women in prison face unique and exacerbated issues that are not adequately addressed by the criminal justice system, especially when it comes to gender responsive social work services. This study uses a qualitative phenomenological design to investigate the lived experiences of women who are incarcerated in the Amhara region at Kobo Prison. The study focuses on the ways in which social work interventions affect the psychosocial well-being and empowerment of these women.

Seven participants were specifically chosen from among the roughly 70 female inmates housed at Kobo Prison to offer a range of viewpoints on the experiences of incarceration. Owing to COVID-19 limitations, open-ended written questionnaire that participants filled out in private were used to collect data, guaranteeing confidentiality. An inductive thematic approach was used to manually analyze the responses.

Findings indicate that incarcerated women face significant barriers including inadequate mental health support, lack of childcare provisions, and insufficient protection from gender based violence, and limited access to vocational and educational opportunities. The informal, underfunded, and frequently gender-insensitive social work services provided in prisons increase women's vulnerabilities and impede their rehabilitation. Notwithstanding these obstacles, counseling services and skill building exercises turned out to be crucial facilitators of empowerment and resilience.

The study emphasizes how important it is to establish gender responsive social work programs that are specifically designed to meet the needs of Ethiopian women who are incarcerated. By putting women's voices front and center, the study adds important knowledge to the little studied field of correctional social work in low-income settings and offers data to support program development and policy changes. In the end, the results support comprehensive, gender-sensitive strategies to enhance the wellbeing and social reintegration of women who are incarcerated.